Madness Over; Time For Practice

Following a very streamlined version of Maryland Madness, Gary Williams walked into the media room here at Comcast Center and posed the inquiry of the night to a group of reporters with their digital recorders extended in his direction.

"Yeah, I was disappointed in our team defense," Williams said sarcastically.

And then Williams moved on to a more serious tone ...

"No, I mean, it's really a good night," he said. "The best thing about Maryland Madness I guess we call it now is that a lot of students are involved besides the basketball players. You have the Gymkana; that's probably the biggest crowd they play in front of all year, which is a big thrill for them. You have the dancers, the band the cheerleaders, they all get their attention that they deserve because they don't get that much attention a lot of times during the year. I think that's part of it, so it's a good night. And I think it kind of gets the players ready for tomorrow morning when we start practice."

Madness was slimmed down considerably this year due to budget restraints. There were no fireworks, no smoke machine, no dunks as the players took the court (speaking of which, the players also did not ascend from the stands as they have done in years past).

Regardless, the scimmage went on as usual. Sophomore guard Sean Mosley and junior forward Dino Gregory shot well from the floor, and the highlight of the outing might have been junior guard Adrian Bowie throwing an alley hoop pass to himself.

"The fans enjoy everything that we do out there," senior guard Eric Hayes said. "It's entertainment, and like Coach said, tonight's about fun. But tomorrow we have the first practice, so we've got to turn that switch off and get into season mode starting tomorrow."

It's just a scrimmage and no one plays defense, but...seeing Gregory and Mosley--2 of our most offensively challenged players--hit their shots was good to see. Did not know Mosley had those kind of ups either. The alley-oop he had on Greivis's head was awesome.